Scripture is prophetic communication. All Scripture comes by human beings partnering with the revealing God. The uniqueness the revelation process that produced the Bible does not empty it of prophetic function. It is unlike any other prophetic revelation process. Nothing in our present prophetic process approaches It.
The Bible is a complete Book. No new books are being written. This has nothing to do with the validity of prophetic function. The inerrant Book describes this process. We cannot maintain our grip on inerrancy and authority of the Scriptures while disregarding what It says about prophetic function.
The Bible is a prophetic revelation. Prophetic revelation makes Divine thinking available. It has layers. All Scripture has primary interpretation, prophetic revelation, and practical application.
Men are ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the Truth. What we know of God and His thinking He reveals. He breaks through the closed system of human thinking to reveal what we can never find by research.
Prophetic Scrapbooking
I have noticed a trend in those given to the prophetic side of things: they seldom countenance the primary interpretation and often miss the practical application.
Prophetic people scrapbook prophetic experiences. They often live as if the prophetic revelation is part of an “other than” reality. The spiritual goes into the scrapbook. If it doesn’t affect the person’s life or lifestyle, it becomes meaningless by that process.
The entire purpose of the prophetic to bring the “other than” into this nature world! Any prophetic revelation that passes through the prophetic person becomes part of the mindset and personal lifestyle of that person even when it was intended for someone else.
Prophetic people should be the most mature and practical. They seldom are because they tend to emphasize the prophetic revelation of Scripture at the expense of primary interpretation and practical application.
When a seer fails to submit to her husband, exhibits childish pouting, manipulating emotional challenges to submission, and does so by entering into a super-spiritual moment of angelic visitation, she is ignoring the primary interpretation and practical application of the Bible.
The heights to which spiritual things might take you never come at the expense of your marriage. The exception of fasting intimacy, for example, is clear in Paul’s exhortation. “You don’t allow your prophetic or spiritual side to empty out your practical relationship and kingdom culture side. No one can say to their spouse, “I am so spiritual that sex is now beneath me.” That person is simply delusional about prophetic function.
Primary Interpretation
Each of us should have a Bible foundation of primary interpretation. We should know what the Bible says before we get spiritual about what it means. While you might be able to find a prophetic sense to a parables, and you should, you should first operate in the primary interpretation.
The Good Samaritan has prophetic revelation. If you ignore the primary interpretation of loving your neighbor as yourself – with the illustrated practical application of the story – you quarantine yourself from your responsibility to help other hurting human beings. You ignore a starving man in your street while thundering up the mountain to hear angels sing.
Some prophetic people capable of prophetic high points also have terrible financial struggles. They wish see like eagles. They wish to know the meaning of 12:12 and 70 x 7, but they can’t balance their checkbooks or pay their credit card bills. Some prophetic people are all into emoting intimacy but have not been intimate with their spouse for six months. Some wish to have an affair with God at the expense of their marriages. “Too holy” in the prayer closet to recognize the beauty of God’s design for marriage, they corrupt the natural to purify spiritual.
Practical Application
If we had a conference in which the prophetic revelation released was actually implemented, we would have immediate earthquake-like transformation! I mean the level of revelation and the wealth of vision available, of implemented, would devastate hell’s best strategic positioning.
My good friend, Clay Nash says that one of the new weapons for a new season is debriefing. After our intense experiences with prophetic revelation, we should include and intentionally plan for an equal time of debriefing.
I see this as essential to prophetic process. It seldom if ever happens. If we spent the same time investment of on doing what God revealed as we do for getting the revelation, we would immediately see greater maturity in the prophetic.
We do not mature in the prophetic by seeing or hearing more. We mature in the prophetic process. God starts trusting us with more treasure when we properly invest what He puts into our hands.
We now have a self-consciousness about the prophetic. It seldom gets past the scrapbook stage. Immediately the word arrives, the battle to install it steals away the revelation. We think the word might obligate God to make something happen. It obligates us to alter our entire lives to God’s priorities.
If you can talk for hours about Song of Songs intimacy, but your own marriage is dead and dry of passion, you may suffer from a treacherous disconnect with the Scriptures. If you can worship for hours in your favorite motif, yet go home and dishonor your spouse, you may have a prophetic revelation void of its primary interpretation and practical application.
Prophetic Revelation
Jesus is always establishing something in the Earth by what He is revealing from Heaven. He is not filling anyone’s spirit with a sense of “other than” to have someone more in tune with Heaven than Earth. To assume that God is revealing Heaven so you can become Enoch betrays God’s intentions for revelation. If your prophetic revelation moves you away from practical application, you are in error.
If being true to the prophetic means you justify a messy house, dirty dishes, poor parenting, messed-up finances, and destructive relational dynamics, you may be deceived. You are assuming the more spiritual you become, the less application that revelation has to your natural world relationships and responsibilities. The opposite is true.
Your prophetic escapism empties you of the very Truth that revelation imparts.
Thyatira
I keep reading these one-liners about Jezebel being a dead woman. I realize that people are assuming the Thyatira discussion is about a real live woman having sex with several of God’s servants and accumulating her own children. Such a conclusion sorta boggles the mind in its obvious impracticability, but it a nice one-liner for some.
Jesus says, “If I reveal the spiritual condition operating in your Ecclesia is Jezebel and you do nothing about it, we have a problem.”
Jesus shows us how to deal with this spiritual condition. He responds to that spiritual condition with the character and characteristics of the historic queen who lived in Elijah and Elisha’s day. In other words, Jesus does not respond to her as a real live woman.
He takes action. He reveals her lovers by throwing them on a bed with her. This is prophetic revelation of who is in cahoots with the pseudo prophet. Then, Jesus says, “I will kill her children.”
Unless you are willing to say that Jesus Christ is going to come to that city and kill the literal children a woman of history who gave birth to them by mating with leaders in the kingdom, therefore making this the same required response we would have to a Jezebel woman doing this today, you need to talk about the prophetic implications. You need to stop talking one-liners about ignoring a dead woman.
On the other hand, without the primary interpretation and practical applications, we would tolerate what God reveals. The revelation doesn’t take care of the problem. We provide leadership intervention. We stop Jezebel’s effort to provide substitute inheritors for kingdom purposes.
Revelation releases responsibility. The authorization to fulfill the responsibility, designed and defined in kingdom by leadership dynamics, is basic to kingdom culture. Who and how the revelation is applied and implemented is as important as receiving the revelation.
